Something to remember when the claims about how the Brits put British music in front of the world are made over the next fortnight.
In the US, this year's awards are being aired on Fuse. Which is lovely for them, but even at their strongest performances struggle to reach audiences on the higher side of a million. (And those million-plus moments have been achieved by moving away from music programming into reality shows; it's unlikely the audience who have embraced those shows are going to be tuning in to see Jack Garratt picking up a prize.)
Not only had Styles not asked, but he hadn't even bothered to credit Scagnetti.
Scagnetti was obviously upset to see his work getting so much praise while nobody knew it was his work, so took to Facebook to complain:
750,000 like - but I don't like it. I'm interested to see who is this guy that published my picture and got 750.000 likes, without even mentioning my name," said Ezequiel on the popular social network.
The One Direction hive mind detected this criticism of Harry Styles, and swarmed into attack.
Like good little corporate citizens, they told Ezequiel he should be thrilled and delighted that his work had pleased Styles; why, they would kill for Harry to share their photos. He should chill.
And if berating the man wasn't enough, they then started to give fake reviews for his photography business.
Oh, and that's not even touching on the homophobic and racist nature of some of the abuse.
"Why don't you sue him" said some; Ezequiel explained, patiently, that this wasn't about money:
#harrystyles maladroitness is not a real reason for me to sue him (you guys invented it), he is not the first publishing my work without permission and without previous agreement.
But you should understand that I have the right to do it if I want. And I have the right to be upset.
I am a rich man, but of another kind of richness, by doing professional pictures, I earn enough to feed my wife and my 2 kids, and that’s all I need.
You see guys, we have different values; success for you is to be famous, to have "likes" in Facebook or to be a pop singer, success for me is raising my family with dignity.
Even more patiently, he explained that it wasn't even about copyright:
Most of you (the ones insulting me) are damned because this: you are not able to understand people who think different than you.
I’m not talking about the lack of knowledge or simple ignorance in subjects as photography, arts, copyright, etc. You are completely lost on those subjects and that’s fine for me, you are kids.
I'm talking about your petty and narrow mind.
You are so narrow-minded that you think that my centre of interest, at my forties, must be a pop band and a -certainly-, nice guy called Harry Styles.
Well... I’m currently following with attention the problem of millions of Syrian refugees living in horrible conditions, dying in the Mediterranean Sea running away from war and terrorism.
I am busy reading some articles about the geopolitical impact of the agreement between USA and Iran concerning the Uranium issue.
But I also worry of the latest terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Tunisia, Mali, Pakistan, to name but a few, and all this bunch of innocent people dying every day in the hands of insane people.
But you blame me because I did not know who is #harrystyles. Great.
He might not know who Harry Styles is. But, boy, does he know what Styles' fans are like.
Can you tell what the story is from this Sun headline?
Yes, it's 'idiots complain because they can't tell the difference between a fake fur hat and a real one'.
Although The Sun might give the impression that it's 'Cerys Matthews wears rabbit hat for piece on Watership Down'.
To be fair, if you scroll far enough down through the online Sun's new layout, you do get to the truth of the story:
Last night a BBC spokeswoman insisted the hat was not real fur.
She said: “We have just spoken to Cerys to double check and it 100 per cent was not a real fur hat.”
She added: “Cerys has confirmed she would not be seen wearing real fur.”
I say "to be fair", what I actually mean is "although the Sun ends its piece with a paragraph that proves the complaints to be spurious, it still dresses the story in a great big furry implication that they aren't."
To be fair, you have to respect the inclusion of Tunes Splits The Atom. But... The Las?
Some of Louise's twitter followers pointed out that Liverpool and Manchester - while both being part of Dear George Osborne's Northern (John) Powerhouse - are different places.
Mensch, of course, has never found a hole she doesn't want to dig deeper into.
Oh stop twisting my melons man about the Las being scousers. Their sound was pure madchester sorry https://t.co/0it0x2TXWO
Unless you were from a major label trying to pull together a quick Madchester compilation cash-in album and needed to pad it out, like the Sorted! Madchester and Baggy album, but that even includes Shine On by The House Of Love. Much has been said about Guy Chadwick, but I don't think he's ever been painted as a musical peer of Northside.
Oh, MySpace. Yes, it's still going, just about, and it's just been sold on again - I'm imagining at a car boot sale, in a box along with twenty old LPs and a broken lamp, under the "give me two quid and the lot's yours, pal."
Though MySpace is a shadow of its former self, Viant claims to have data from 1 billion registered users. Time and Viant say they plan to combine that data with its own subscriber information, providing it with a pool of data which it claims “rivals industry leaders Facebook and Google”.
Buying MySpace for its user data is a bit like buying an empty milk bottle to discover what cows smell like. Unless Time is going to be fine-tuning all its content to appeal to Tom.
Poor right-wingers. There they were, enjoying their Superbowls, probably chuckling a little - "look, someone on Twitter has posted a picture of an owl with a monocle because it's a superb owl" and then Beyonce happened.
Pretzels were spat out. Hot dogs dashed to ground. Amusing pictures of owls wearing top hats went unretweeted as the very LOLZ went out of the moment.
Beyonce had brought politics into the Superbowl. And that isn't allowed. How can you sully a sporting event by turning it into a political platform?
Well, obviously that would be different.
But you can't have the NFL's showcase being used to promote an ideology, can you?
The NFL reportedly accepted millions of dollars from the defence department over the course of three years in exchange for honouring troops and veterans before games, the New Jersey Star Ledger reports.
The Pentagon reportedly signed contracts with 14 NFL teams — including the New York Jets, the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens — between 2011-2012 stipulating that teams would be paid sums ranging from $US60,000-$US1 million each (in federal taxpayer money) to pause before the start of games and salute the city’s “hometown heroes,” according to nj.com.
Well, obviously, that would be different, probably.
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani blasted Beyoncé’s Black Panther Party tribute at the Super Bowl, calling the performance an “attack [on] police officers.”
“I thought that she used it as a platform to attack police officers, who are the people who protect her and protect us and keep us alive,” Giuliani said Monday on Fox and Friends.
“What we should be doing, in the African-American community and in all communities, is build up respect for police officers and focus on the fact that when something does go wrong, okay, we’ll work on that,” Giuliani said.
Yeah, come on Beyonce, what more do you want? If the police accidentally choke a black man to death, or shoot him dead, Rudy's saying they'll certainly add it to some sort of list of things they need to think about. Let's not suggest that police need to earn respect rather than be gifted it, right?
Elsewhere on Breitbart - which is pretty much like Craigslist for Americans who believe their income levels means they can have their racism reclassified as "simple common sense" - the inability of the right to hold more than one idea in their minds at a time is displayed in the way they assume nobody else can, either:
But the pop star might have been late to the performance if she hadn’t received a highway-clearing police escort to deliver her to Levi’s Stadium on time.
As some users pointed out on Twitter, police cleared the highway so that Beyoncé could make it to Santa Clara without sitting in pesky game-day traffic
[...]
But during the Super Bowl halftime show, the pop star performed a full-scale tribute to Black Lives Matter and the militant, anti-law enforcement Black Panthers, with her backup dancers clad in Panther uniforms with fists raised in the “black power” salute.
[...]
Needless to say, social media users were eager to weigh in on the pop star’s apparent hypocrisy.
Needless to say.
The possibility that you can see that some police behaving badly and out of control doesn't mean that all police officers are like that doesn't exist in the minds of Breitbart, its readers or some social media users, needless to say.
That you can say 'stop shooting us' without it meaning 'I believe that every single police officer will shoot an unarmed black person at the earliest opportunity'.
That Beyonce isn't attacking the police, she's attacking the police for not doing more to ensure that those officers who are trigger-happy, or choke-happy, and, yes, racist as fuck, don't remain within the ranks and when they commit crimes, get punished for those crimes.
That's not hypocrisy. Knowing it isn't hypocritical, but pretending you believe it is? That's actual hypocrisy.
Ellie Goulding sought an interview with David Cameron, the current Prime Minister of some of the United Kingdom. He couldn't find time:
The Starry Eyed singer wanted to meet with David Cameron in her role as patron for the Marylebone Project, which is dedicated to helping homeless women in London.
But the 29-year-old, who has campaigned for vulnerable people since rising to fame, said she and project chief executive Mark Russell were told the PM didn't have the time to meet with them.
She told The Mirror: "We genuinely just wanted a chat to see what his view was on it. We're not trying to confront him.
"Mark reached out to talk about the recent housing bills and received one of those standard letters, so I don't know whether he even saw it or not.
"I can't say at this point that he's not interested, as I don't know if that's the case. It might be that he's looking for an opportunity to do something."
This story might, then, be 'someone in Prime Minister's office sends form reply to letter' but the Belfast Telegraph decided to go with this as the headline:
Ellie Goulding claims snub by David Cameron over women's issues talks
They repeated the "snub" in a photo caption on the story:
Ellie Goulding claims David Cameron snubbed her after she asked to discuss women's issues with him
And the first paragraph of the story also drops the s-bomb:
Pop star Ellie Goulding said she was snubbed by the Prime Minister after asking to discuss women's issues with him.
The only thing is, she doesn't actually say, or claim, that she was snubbed - just says, with an air of reasonableness, that no meeting was arranged and Dave probably didn't even have anything to do with it.
It's not quite as bad as the claims that circulated this week suggesting she used IV drips rather than food as some sort of diet fad. But it's still unfair. It's even unfair on bloody Cameron, and anything that makes you feel sympathy for the Grinning Pauper-kickbot has to be a bad thing.
Sonu Nigam was on a chartered flight, and encouraged to sing a song or two over the PA system. He obliged.
Trouble is, nowadays if things like that happen, it gets shared on the net, and people hear about it. Including the safety regulators of Indian flights. They're not happy, and have called in the executives from Jet, the airline involved, to ask why a safety tool was being used as an entertainment platform.
Jet, in the face of a potential punishment for letting this happen, have had to take action; and so they've suspended the flight crew involved to try and head that off by looking like they're taking it seriously.
In a statement, Nigam Friday said, “I have witnessed an elaborate fashion show in an aircraft. I have heard of small concerts happening in aircraft. I have seen pilots and crew members cracking jokes to loosen up passengers in other countries, which is so cool. To suspend crew members for asking me to sing on the address system, when the seat belt signs were off, and no announcements were to be made, is nothing less than punishing someone for spreading happiness.” “Pity there’s no one to question such harshness except the media perhaps. Indians, need to loosen up. This act of lack of common sense, according to me, is real intolerance,” he added.
It's real intolerance, people. Punishing people for spreading happiness. I mean, under what circumstances might you suddenly need to make a cabin announcement on a plane, right? That hardly ever happens. That people survive to tell you about, anyway.
Point of fact: 2016 marks a new year for everyone. That's pretty much how new years work.
A year of hope, optimism, and most importantly, new music! We are immensely proud of all that we have been able to share with you over the years. Music, music, music. We very much want to continue doing that, but that’s going to take a little help from all of you.
As you know, prior to the untimely passing of our brother in arms, Scott, we had been working with the incomparable Chester Bennington. What you also likely know is that having Chester front two bands of this size and scope was too much for one man to be able to do and so regretfully we had to move onto a new chapter together. This is where you come in…
Let's just look at that sentence there again, shall we?
What you also likely know is that having Chester front two bands of this size and scope was too much for one man to be able to do and so regretfully we had to move onto a new chapter together.
Let's look at it again.
What you also likely know is that having Chester front two bands of this size and scope was too much for one man to be able to do and so regretfully we had to move onto a new chapter together.
That's three times we've read that sentence, which is figure is at least six times more than it was read before it was published.
We are officially announcing that we are seeking a new vocalist to front Stone Temple Pilots. We’ve already heard from many talented people, but want to make this an opportunity for many more so we’ve set up a way for you to do just that.
This is the reverse of when someone calls a place to tell them they've got a bunch of fantastic job offers but just wanted to see if you're hiring right now to give you an opportunity to get on board.
"Hey, look at all these talented people who want to front our band"
"We should definitely see if there are any other talented people who want to front our band by putting a message on the internet".
Number one: because it's effectively patting Taylor Swift on the head and saying 'shush now about streaming sites only making you a tiny, tiny bit richer';
Number two: because when was the last time you even remembered Tidal even existed?
Hats off to her for coming up with an advertising campaign for a dying platform in which she's invested while making it look like she doesn't care about money. It's evil, but stylishly evil.
Phil Anselmo's Nazi salute and "white power" cry during a Dimebag Darrell memorial hasn't gone down well - and perhaps the best thing about this whole story has been the way metal fans have called him out on it.
Attempt number one was to try and claim he was making a reference to the wine being served backstage:
He claimed at first he had been making a joke about the white wine served to performers at the event, who included Dave Grohl and members of Metallica, and said: “I fucking love everyone, I fucking loathe everyone, and that’s that. No apologies from me.”
In a lot of ways, that's probably a worse claim than the original - everyone expects Anselmo to spout Nazi bollocks, but suggesting that he was organising a protest against the backstage spritzers paints a picture of what happens when entitlement collides with too much time on a person's hands.
Still, he's realised that "I was taking wine" wasn't going to work, and he's now issued a statement:
Philip H Anselmo here, and I’m here to basically respond to all the heat I’ve been getting that I deserve completely.
“I was at the Dimebash, and it was extremely late at night. There was heavy-duty talk between myself and those who love Dime. And heavy emotions were flowing, jokes were made backstage that transpired upon the stage, and it was ugly. It was uncalled for. And anyone who knows me and my true nature knows that I don’t believe in any of that; I don’t want to be part of any group. I’m an individual, and I am a thousand percent apologetic to anyone that took offence to what I said because you should have taken offence to what I said. And I am so sorry, and I hope you just … man, give me another chance to … just give me another chance. I love all of you. And anyone who’s met me, anyone who knows me knows that I love all of you. Bless you.”
This might have worked if he'd not tried to pass it all off as vinicultural humour a couple of days earlier.
Two great problems lurk in this apology, though: the first being that jokes from backstage were "transpiring" on stage, which suggests that other performers might have been having a third-reich yukfest and only Anselmo was gauche enough to take his Hitlerian hijinks the wrong side of the curtain.
The second is that he seems to be pleading with us to believe he couldn't be a Nazi because he's not the sort of guy who joins things.
No, Phil. We'd want to know you're not a Nazi because Nazism is an odious skunk of a political ideology, not because you'd find it a faff to have to turn up to meetings and maintain your membership fees.
He was sort-of-right; turns out it's going to be ELO not LEO.
Or, rather, whatever the legally allowable format of the Electric Light Orchestra is these days - Jeffy Lyne's Electrish Light Orchestra or something like that.
Arriving back in the UK from a weekend in Amsterdam, on a TV screen glimpsed through a security window was a grinning, waving Terry Wogan. We already knew, of course - this is the 21st Century and you don't have to wait anymore until the news, on the hour, with James Alexander Gordon, to find out what's going on.
My Mum loved Radio 2, or at least loved it enough to be able to listen to it during the day, and much of my early musical experience came from 233 and 330 (less so Stereo VHF). Both Waggoner's' Walks, Diddy David Hamilton, Pete Murray, Jimmy Young and, every breakfast, Terry Wogan. This was his first run of breakfast shows - the era of Pru Forrest, JR, and suggesting that Super Trouper claims Abba were making telephone calls from Tesco. It seemed to be at the time that doing the breakfast show on Radio 2 must surely be the most desirable job in the world.
Along with Ribena and fried eggs, Wogan was how I woke up every morning - calming and reassuring, especially on those mornings when my eyes had gummed themselves shut and I'd come to in panic and fear. He was the very model of avuncularity and, although my tastes moved on, I'll miss knowing he's around.
Dale Griffin, Mott The Hoople's drummer, has died.
Although it was his work on the drumstool that leads his biography, Griffin's influence on music runs much deeper than that - between 1981 and 1994, he worked for the BBC, primarily producing sessions. And most of those sessions were for John Peel. The John Peel wikia has started on the work of detailing the 2000 or so Peel Sessions that he - often with a grump in his heart, it must be said - produced. They've got as far as E at the moment, but it's already a list that brings together Ex, Terence Trent D'Arby and John Chibadura & the Tembo Brothers. There's not many producers who could claim to have worked with so many acts, across such a wide range of styles, and with such success.
There's been no end of great (and also rotten) pieces written about David Bowie, but none perhaps as strange as former NME editor Steve Sutherland's bit which appears in the Stratford Herald. Oddly - I suspect as a quirk of a local paper's publishing system - the online version appears under his wife's byline.
It turns out Steve attempted to save Bowie from Tin Machine by sending him a shoegaze mixtape:
Now, knowing his reputation as a magpie, scarfing up other people’s ideas, sprinkling some fairy dust on them and then successfully representing them as his own, I figured Dave might benefit from an earful of some new stuff, so duly made him a cassette.
The tracklisting went something like Lush, Moose, Chapterhouse, Adorable , Slowdive, The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Telescopes, Ride — a veritable who’s who of shoegazers making a name for themselves at the time and a line-up I felt sure would top-up Dave’s creative juices.
Just goes to show how wrong you can be! A few weeks after I sent him said tape, I received a very nicely wrapped package which contained a small broken-up jigsaw of Michelangelo’s David. When the pieces were all put in place, there was a message handwritten on the back in, if I recall correctly, green ink, the gist of which went something like, “Thanks for the lovely tape. Not really my cup of tea. Try this instead.” The “this” was a cassette tape of Different Trains, an interminable modern classical piece by avant-garde composer Steve Reich performed by the dreaded Kronos Quartet. Shudder.
It turns out that Steve - by this point having moved from the Melody Maker to the NME - had a bit more luck with the next generation of British indie stars:
My last encounter with Mr Bowie was not long after I took over editing NME. All the staff hated me for reasons we needn’t go into here but I figured — rightly as it turned out — that if I could deliver a journalistic coup, they might come around.
So what I did was arrange for David Bowie to meet Brett Anderson from Suede, who were then the hottest band in Britain. I sat in on and taped their conversation with Brett, being a big fan, asking tons of questions and Bowie, being Bowie, offering up sage avuncular advice about not doing too many drugs like he once did etc.
Again, a fun day made easy by Bowie’s polite and gracious ease in company, and his genuine interest in what Brett had to say.
Brett and Bowie, coming together to save an NME editor. There's surely a Hollywood movie in that?
Do you ever find yourself, in quiet moments, wondering whatever happened to "don't call me Sting's daughter" I Blame Coco?
After her first album futtered to a halt in the murky depths of the album charts in 2010, she vanished. But now she's back and she's "gone solo" (although I thought she was pushing the IBC as a PJ Harvey style one person with a collective name affair?).
Anyway, there's a new album. And most of the coverage is still stressing at great length how there's more to her than just being Sting's daughter. Because there's no way the only way she's going to get press coverage is through being Sting's daughter. Oh no. Being Sting's daughter is just a detail in the life of Sting's daughter - a life that started at conception, an event at which Sting was very much present. She's now (again) stepping out from the shadow thrown by being Sting's daughter, to be absolutely her own person. And that person is Sting's daughter. But let's not focus on that famous father - who, by the way, is Sting.
Giorgio Gomelsky, the original manager of The Rolling Stones, has died.
His entry into the music business came by way of London's coffee bar boom - his tiny Espresso bar became such a hit it formed a foundation of a nightclub; then, he helped create The Crawdaddy. This venue gave early starts to the Stones, Julie Driscoll, Rod Stewart and others. Although his stewardship of the Stones career wasn't long, his early support gave them the base on which Andrew Loog Oldham would build; Gomelsky moved on to help The Yardbirds build their career.
By the mid 60s, Gomelsky was running a management/label hybrid, Paragon, releasing music on the Marmalade label. This came apart when the money men for the venture at Polydor fell out with him; Gomelsky headed for France where he would find himself working with Gong and managing Magma, almost single-handedly creating an alternative music scene for the nation.
Since 1978, he lived in New York. He curated a series of music festivals and again got involved with releasing music and managing musicians.
When I got to London in the mid-fifties, the “pop” scene was just a pale imitation of white US commercial music. At least there was a local “do-it-yourself” music, “skiffle”, (imported to the UK by British bandleader CHRIS BARBER) derived from Lonnie Johnson and other blues/folksters, which allowed young people to take up instruments. The Beatles started out as “The Quarrymen” and were able to inject some freshness into music when they started to make it. The Stones and the other blues bands introduced a new generation to black music thereby rendering an invaluable service too. European musicians were practicing jazz, and although aesthetically more appreciated than in the US, it seemed less urgent, less “dramatic”, less speaking to a new generation. So rock took over. Later the punks kicked everybody in the proverbial ---. This opportunity is still present, but bands/managers/labels are now so focused on making it in whatever category they and the “industry” define themselves to be, that a “major breakthrough” has become well nigh improbable. It’s the old story yet again, the seemingly tragic-comic vicious circle between the true function and merit of art and that of commerce and politics. Ultimately, it’s a question of education. I’m hopeful that the internet will allow the natural curiosity of those attracted to music to explore every nook and cranny of musical production and discover where the real values are and that bands will emerge who know what directions to pursue.
Giorgio Gomelsky was 82. He died of cancer, like so many others.
Troy Shondell, a Transatlantic one-hit wonder, has died.
His hit, This Time (We're Really Breaking Up), sold a million copies in the US - making it to number six (different world, 1961) in America and 22 in the UK. Nothing he did subsequently would worry the chart compilers on either side of the ocean.
Shodell went on to work with Phil Spector, but decided that his professional future wasn't in front of the microphone. He moved into the collections business, becoming an executive at ASCAP.
Troy Shondell died from complications related to Alzheimers and Parkinsons. He was 76.
Here's what happened: Chou is from Taiwan, and she went on TV in South Korea with her band Twice to do a song or two. During the course of her performance, she waved the Taiwanese flag about a bit.
Cue a massive shit storm.
The end result? Her panicky, pissweak management forced her to read out a prepared statement apologising to the lovely people of the Chinese government. That a K-Pop star should be forced to dance attendance on the Beijing regime is no surprise - our Chancellor and Prime Minister regularly submit themselves to lick buttholes in the hope of getting a few Yuan shoved into their hands.
But Chung managed to signal so much distance from the words she was being forced to mouth, she managed to create the least authentic pop star video since Sam Smith did the Bond theme:
It's hard to think how she could have distanced herself further from the bit of paper - perhaps if she'd have pretended the words were being dictated to her by a sock-puppet, or maybe made the "Whatevs" sign at the end of each sentence.
The funny thing is, her flag waving and the breeze it created may have helped swung the Taiwanese elections this week against the pro-China Vichyesque regime, and in favour of Tsai Ing-wen's independence party.
She's 16 and making pop music. She's also bringing geopolitical conflict to a head. What have you done today, Ellie Goulding?
Although, technically, Adele shouldn't have been in the lists at all - her album came out in December, and traditionally the Brits have covered a year running November to November. But a swift rewrite of the rules has ensured she'll turn up.
Here's the full list that people call moribund:
British male solo artist
Aphex Twin
Calvin Harris
James Bay
Jamie xx
Mark Ronson
British female solo artist
Adele
Amy Winehouse
Florence + the Machine
Jess Glynne
Laura Marling
British group
Blur
Coldplay
Foals
One Direction
Years & Years
British breakthrough act
Catfish and the Bottlemen
James Bay
Jess Glynne
Wolf Alice
Years & Years
Critics' choice
Winner: Jack Garratt
Izzy Bizu
Frances
Brits global success award
To be announced
British single
Adele - Hello
Calvin Harris & Disciples - How Deep Is Your Love
Ed Sheeran & Rudimental- Bloodstream
Ellie Goulding - Love Me Like You Do
James Bay - Hold Back The River
Jess Glynne - Hold My Hand
Little Mix - Black Magic
Olly Murs ft Demi Lovato - Up
Philip George - Wish You Were Mine
Years & Years - King
British album of the year
Adele - 25
Coldplay - A Head Full of Dreams
Florence + the Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
James Bay - Chaos and the Calm
Jamie xx - In Colour
British producer of the year
Charlie Andrew
Mark Ronson
Mike Crossey
Tom Dalgety
British artist video of the year
Adele - Hello
Calvin Harris & Disciples - How Deep Is Your Love
Ed Sheeran - Photograph
Ellie Goulding - Love Me Like You Do
Jessie J - Flashlight
Little Mix - Black Magic
Naughty Boy ft Beyonce & Arrow Benjamin - Runnin' (Lose It All)
One Direction - Drag Me Down
Sam Smith - Writing's On The Wall
Years & Years - King
International male solo artist
Drake
Father John Misty
Justin Bieber
Kendrick Lamar
The Weeknd
International female solo artist
Ariana Grande
Bjork
Courtney Barnett
Lana Del Rey
Meghan Trainor
International group
Alabama Shakes
Eagles of Death Metal
Major Lazer
Tame Impala
U2
There are odd moments of joy in the list - I think the thirty seconds of Courtney Barnett we get when they run through the international female shortlist is going to be the highlight of the ceremony.
But, ultimately, it's the presence of Amy Winehouse which makes this so frustrating. No offence to Amy, but... she's not exactly had the most creative 2015, has she? Yes, there was a movie about her, but the message "to be an exciting female star in British music in 2015, it helped if you'd been dead half a decade" isn't exactly making much of a claim for the scene, is it?
Although if the message to women artists is "you're better off dead", that's probably more encouraging than telling the men that they should be aspiring to be James Bay.
That's been a hell of a day. You could hear Shaun Keaveny on 6Music trying to keep it as light as possible, but also trying to keep it together. The Today programme was noticeably less interested in the other stories it had to cover; the Archbishop of Canterbury's appearance to talk about the death pangs of the Anglican Communion was cut down.
Twitter - for a while, at least - was united in positive memories. (Tumblr, being Tumblr, less so).
And it's not that Tumblr didn't have a point, it's just that its timing was off - there's time to sift through the Nazi stuff, and the China Girl video, and Tin Machine and the period when he perhaps became detached from a sense of humour. But let's have a moment to fill out the pro column first, shall we?
Here's a quick round-up of some of the coverage from today that you might have missed:
Pop music provides emotional links back to our earliest memories and experiences, for starters. Speaking personally, it takes me, The Mum, back to me as A Child, straightaway. (My first memory? Being allowed to wash the dishes with Grandma at two-and-a-half, singing along to ABBA's Super Trouper on the radio.) It also takes me back to my parents as parents, fitting my feet into their shoes. Oh, the times I'd tell my dad what was No 1 in the charts (like The Flying Pickets' cover of Yazoo's Only You in Christmas 1983 – probably the first Christmas I can blurrily remember). Oh, the times Mam would make car journeys better by playing her Sounds Of 1963 cassette (me wiggling my shoes to The Swinging Blue Jeans' Hippy Hippy Shake as we headed off on holiday). Music soundtracked my first impressions of these important people, and it's not a coincidence. It's the way we are wired.
One of the many who made the leap from pirate radio to the starting line-up of Radio One, Stewart wound up doing Junior Choice for years, playing Nellie The Elephant and the like.
Ah, Junior Choice. It's become a cliche to cough the word "yewtree" when writing about any DJ from this era, but his own autobiography - reviewed by Danny Baker for Rocking Vicar - did leave "Junior Choice" seeming somewhat appropriately inapproiate:
"I met my wife when she was 13, in 1970…" P.146 (He was 34 at this point)
"…my wife started on my stomach – and nothing else! – when she was 13…" P.147
"I arrived (at her parents) at 7pm and was greeted at the door by what I can only describe as a 13 year old apparition! She was simply stunning." (P147)
"…(the following year, so 14 now) I travelled to Italy to see her. I had just split from Eve Graham of The New Seekers and so, as the song goes, I was "Free Again"! P153
He marries the poor girl when she is 17. Elsewhere –
"We played a charity football match at a girls' school in Lingfield. After the match we visited some of the boarders, who were mostly epileptic. The pupils had just reached puberty and the girls wouldn't let us out of the dormitory. We had to be rescued by the staff!" (P 177)
But it's not all schoolgirls and cheeky winks. Stewpot also finds space to record his contributions to British culture, as Baker records:
And consider this. When you or I get to 66 years old and might, in a drunken orgy of self congratulation actually toy with penning something for the ages about our brief flit across these shifting sands – how much space shall we allow to that one edition of "Celebrity Weakest Link" we pitched up on. A line? A mention in the fulsome notes at the back?
Try NINE FUCKING PAGES! Nine fucking pages in a large print volume devoted to who said what on an edition of "The Weakest Link". That's a full life examined alright, Stewpot!
I swear I got through two complete highlighter pens. Wendy had to call me five times for dinner. Me! For dinner! Five times!
I’m in touch with some of the old faces, including David Hamilton, Paul Burnett and Tony Brandon. We’ll either meet socially or at a convention, such as the tribute to pirate radio in Zurich five years ago
Not entirely convinced that people you saw at effectively a works do half a decade count as people you're in touch with.
He was alright on Crackejack, though. His role was presenter, effectively a headmaster whose idea of dress-down-Friday was to wear a blazer rather than a suit jacket. But somebody had to prove
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